LFS Launches Hall of Fame and Membership Drive

25 Novels Nominated for Hall of Fame

Libertarian Futurist Society members have nominated 25 novels for LFS’s new Prometheus Hall of Fame. The honorary award was created to recognize the best libertarian fiction ever published.

In order to adequately cover the enormous amount of excellent libertarian fiction already in print, ten finalists and two winners will be chosen, twice the number of the Prometheus Award for current fiction.

For both awards, nominations are made by all LFS members, but only for the Hall of Fame do the Basic members vote for the finalists and winners. (Prometheus Award winners are chosen by Advisory members only.)

With these exceptions, the Hall of Fame follows the same rules as the Prometheus Award, and has the same deadlines for nominations (March 1) and final voting (June 15).

Winners of the Hall of Fame Award, if still living, will receive, in addition to a certificate, a gold coin, the Adam Smith Five Piece, privately minted by the Gold Standard Corporation. If deceased, their family or publisher will be sent the certificate.

The Prometheus Hall of Fame and the Prometheus Award are open to any work of fiction which dramatizes the value of human freedom. But, because speculative fiction is the literature that most often depicts a utopian (or dystopian vision—which allows the reader to live, for a time in an alternative society, science fiction will probably dominate both awards every year.

Prizes for All Recruiters

The Libertarian Futurist Society has launched a membership drive with special rewards for the LFS members who recruit the most new libertarian futurists.

All current LPS members who bring in even one new member will win a six-month trial subscription to Claustrophobia, the life expansion newsletter published by LES members, Eric Geislinger and Jane Talisman.

Every LFS member who recruits at least two new members will receive a one-year subscription to Claustrophobia.

The three LFS members who recruit the most new members between now and the contest deadline of August 1, 1983 will be invited to participate in this year’s Prometheus Award and Hall of Fame ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore on Labor Day weekend.

In addition, they will each receive a personally autographed set of L. Neil Smith’s published novels—including his new The Nagasaki Vector, current Prometheus nominees The Venus Belt and Their Majesties Bucketeers, and last year’s Prometheus winner The Probability Broach.

Plus, they will win a personally autographed copy of The Illuminoids a study of secret societies and political paranoia written by LFS member Neal Wilgus, which was described by Robert Anton Wilson as a “damned fine piece of original and historical research.” They will also receive a three-year Claustrophobia subscription.

But that’s not all. There will also be special “Early Bird” prizes. The first three LFS members to recruit one new Advisory member (or three new Basic members) will win their choice of one of the above books by Neil Smith or Neal Wilgus.

And the first three members to recruit more than two new Advisory (or five classic) members will get to choose an additional free book. Besides the Smith and Wilgus books, other available contest prizes include For Freedom of Imagination by Andrei Sinyavsky and Anarchy and Order by Herbert Read.

Sinyavsky’s book is a collection (in hardback) of essays on culture, freedom, and science fiction by a famed Russian dissident and novelist. “Underneath all the specific comments one can hear&ellipsis;the call for freedom—freedom for the imagination and for liberation from the bonds of Socialist realism. This is, in summary, the great single message of his essays’ said the literary critic Murray Peppard in his introduction: “Man must be free to create.”

Anarchy and Order is a hardback collection of essays by the prominent British “philosophical” anarchist Herbert Read. Even libertarians who do not consider themselves anarchists will find Read’s book enlightening because he explores the relationship of culture to politics—one of the major concerns of the Libertarian Futurist Society—in such essays as “Poets and Politicians” and “Revolution and Reason.”

To aid LFS members in membership recruitment, the Society now has available a concise introductory brochure/letter explaining the LFS’s goals and current projects. Copies of this valuable outreach tool can be obtained from LFS headquarters at the rate of 5/$1.

“As a grassroots network of individualists,” said Michael Grossberg, “it’s highly appropriate that the LFS rely on that network for growth.”